Question

Why is there "PasswordAuthentication yes" in sshd_config even though I changed it when creating the image?

I’m creating an image using Packer and during provisioning I make sure that “PasswordAuthentication” is set to no. I verified that it is by printing the config during the provisioning process.

Now when I start a droplet from the created image I don’t supply any SSH keys (because those were already added as part of the provisioning). It seems that because of this the config of my custom image is altered to allow root login via the password that is sent to me via email.

When I inspect the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file I can find an entry

PasswordAuthentication yes

Is it correct that DigitalOcean is modifying my image after creation or am I doing something wrong? This is the command I used to create the droplet. Image ID is the actual Image ID.

doctl compute droplet create test --image "31405797" --region "ams3" --size "2gb" --wait
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Accepted Answer

According to DigitalOcean support the only way to prevent any meddling with SSH configuration of custom snapshots is to supply some SSH keys.

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